Redemption
by Igenlode Wordsmith
Summary: Meg shoots someone else. And it's not a mistake.


_A/N: This has of course been done to death already... but here's my own 'repurposing' of the finale to 'Love Never Dies', inspired by some discussion of the latest (Hamburg) production._

 _This is not a version of the characters I particularly endorse — but it's one I can see Andrew Lloyd Webber accepting, at a pinch!_

* * *

 **Redemption**

Meg's voice cracks in betrayal.

"Christine — always Christine!"

The tenuous threads of hope — of understanding — that the Phantom's voice had sent spinning out around her are ripped asunder, and she springs back as if from a closing trap. The gun is levelled between them. It fires.

For a moment there is absolute shock. Then Christine cries out.

The Phantom has made no sound, but his hand is pressed against his side. And over his fingers blood is spilling out, a thick wet slick across his coat.

"It was an accident." He has to catch his breath before he speaks, but his voice holds them all pinned with its power. "You all saw it, you understand? _It was an accident_."

"No!" Meg is sobbing now hysterically. "You can't take this from me — even this! I meant it, do you hear me, I meant it. And I'd do it again..."

She has covered her face, and his words spill out over her head to lash at her mother. "You — Giry! Will you stand by and let your daughter throw her life away on my account? Again?"

Madame Giry has stood frozen in grief and guilt for all the minutes of Meg's confession; but with that final biting jibe at a blindness he too had shared, her eyes flash, and for a moment she seems about to confront him. But beneath his touch blood is soaking the cloth fast — too fast. There is an instant's pause, and it is as if a message passes between them.

Then she presses past him on the narrow gantry to go to Meg, who collapses, weeping, into the refuge of her mother's arms. And the Phantom, who has caught hold of the railing, crumples slowly and terribly to the ground as that support breaks loose and falls away beneath him.

"No!" Christine runs forward to fling herself, aghast, to her knees at his side. She tries to staunch the bleeding with her own small fingers, thrusting Gustave back as he seeks to cling to her skirts. Her grasp leaves a bloody smear across the child's sleeve and he shrinks away wild-eyed, seeking the comfort of the familiar in a world where there is none to be had.

"Father! Where's Father?"

That brings him back his mother's attention as nothing else could have done. "Oh God, Gustave—"

Behind her on the ground, the wounded man's hands close over her forearms like a vice as he struggles to pull himself up. "Christine, no!"

Her tears spill over. "I promised, but Raoul— everything's changed. And now... he has to know. Gustave, your father—"

"Gustave!" His voice cuts across hers, and his eyes compel the boy's attention through the mask of horror and fear. "Gustave, get away from here. Get help — quickly. Go. Go!"

Gustave hesitates a moment longer, caught between the impulse to obedience, and the mother whose loyalties — for the first time in his memory — are inexplicably elsewhere. With a sob of his own, he turns and runs.

"Please—" His mother's cry comes too late, and the Phantom's grip holds her imprisoned as he clings to her for support. She lets her head fall again in despair. "He's only a boy. What good can he do? What help can he bring?"

The Phantom's mouth twists in the old mocking humour beneath the mask. "Christine — do you really think it will make any difference?"

The last word is choked off, and a gout of blood runs suddenly from his mouth, bright from his lungs and hideous. "Do you want him to remember the father of his nightmares — like this?"

"No," Christine whispers, against the evidence of her eyes. "It can't be. Not so soon. Not this way. I had nothing, nothing left but you — and now... No. No!"

"Just love... just live..." His voice is a thread and his eyes are half-closed, but his grasp on her has not slackened, and with his head on her shoulder as she kneels by him his bloodied mouth relaxes into what is almost a smile.

"But now there isn't any time..." Christine is still trying, hopelessly, to stem the flow. There is a drying smear across her face where she has dashed the back of an unthinking hand over her eyes. "And what about the boy? Oh, what am I to do?"

"Gustave de Chagny... will have all I can give." A cough. His eyes open again; meet hers. "And he bears... his father's name."

" _Raoul_?" A hot tear runs down unheeded, leaving fresh streaks in the rusty stain. "Raoul left me — called us fools ever to marry, romantic idiots... back then... in our days at the Opera..."

"Once upon another time..." It is an echo from a dying man. His grasp tightens; falls away. "Christine, I stole a glimpse of joy... the most I'd ever known... and now I am repaid..."

"No. You deserved love." Christine's voice is fierce. "You deserve it!"

"You don't believe me?" He laughs a little, painfully. "Oh, but a man who would threaten your son to keep you with him, to hear your voice... would do anything to separate you from... an inconvenient husband. I played upon his weaknesses... in a bet I couldn't lose..."

"A _bet_?" For the first time Christine draws back, in instinctive, appalled understanding. "You mean— when he— No. It's not true!"

"Ask him... yourself." The Phantom's gaze has gone to an approaching movement in the shadows, somewhere beyond her left shoulder, and Madame Giry too, still cradling Meg, raises her head sharply at the sight of the newcomers. "For you see how little he is willing to leave you — even when he has given his word to do just that!"

Those last words are hoarse but pitched to carry, and Raoul, entering in Gustave's wake, flinches from them, his head rising defiantly in response. For a moment it seems he is about to rush to Christine's side; but she turns a look of betrayal from one man to the other, and Gustave has hung back abruptly, dragging on his father's hand. Raoul hesitates, then drops to one knee to put his arm round the boy as Gustave buries his face in his shoulder. But his attention is visibly, painfully, on Christine.

"Look with your heart, and not with your eyes," the Phantom whispers. "The heart understands, the heart never..."

"...dies." The word chokes in Christine's throat, for the coming of death is all too evident on the stark face below her, despite the shielding mask.

"Forgive me, I beg you... Raise me up..." His grip has slackened with the last of his ebbing strength, and now it is she who clutches at him, holding him upright for one last effort of that iron will. "Giry, your daughter will stand her trial, but they must acquit... on the testimony not of her mother alone, but of the Vicomtesse de Chagny... Meg's name will be everywhere. You will know how to use that... to win her the stardom she deserves. Meg—"

But she will not look at him. His head falls back.

"Christine?" One hand reaches up, blindly, to trace her features, as if it is growing dark, and instinctively Christine gathers him close like an ailing child. "You kissed me once... to set me free. Kiss me one more time—"

Tears touch his face in benediction as she stoops to kiss him full on the mouth in front of them all. It lasts the space of a breath, maybe two.

But there will be no more breaths. When she lays him down, his head rolls limply to one side, and the half-open eyes are unseeing and still.

Christine closes them, gently, and rises to her feet. For a long, uncertain moment she stands alone. Then her eyes meet those of Raoul.

Murmuring a soft word to Gustave, her husband holds out his arms in a gesture that is half-offering, half-appeal. She takes a few hesitant steps, then begins to run. An instant later, blood-stained as she is, she is pressed close against his heart with his face buried in her hair.

"Love never dies..." Madame Giry sets Meg aside and comes forward slowly, her voice lifting gradually to fill the air. "Love never alters... hearts may get broken, love endures. Love never fades... love will continue..."

Raoul rocks his wife in his arms, tears on his own cheeks now. Gustave clings close against his parents, head nestled in Christine's lap. And Meg — Meg crosses to the Phantom's side and kneels to lift the mask free from his face with infinitely gentle care.

She looks down on him clear-eyed and without shrinking, the white mask held high in one hand as if in memory of those days so long ago. Then — as the curtain falls — she catches both his hands in hers and presses them against her face, covering them with kisses.

* * *

The show is over; the last notes have been played. The conductor holds the orchestra poised for a long, choked moment, and around me in the stalls I glimpse faces as tearstained as those on stage. Then — as the Coney Island theme segues into vaudeville exuberance, as the chorus run forward into the walkdown, as the principals take their bows, as Raoul and Christine lead out tonight's Gustave for cheers of his own, as the Phantom, once again securely masked but very much alive, comes forward on the arm of a beaming Meg — the theatre erupts in wave after wave of applause. The composer, receiving an opening-night bouquet from the hand of a statuesque Madame Giry, appears delighted but a little bemused, with the air of one who has of course known it all along. And various bloggers and newspaper critics begin their heated and/or measured verdict on this latest iteration of the troubled production.

As for me, I'm just glad to be here. It's a long way to Broadway, but it seems the trip was worth every penny...

 _(Well, a fan can dream.)_


End file.
